Paul Cypher builds on need for training software

In three years, Paul Cypher's Fairport-based company has grown from two to 21 clients and he expects to turn a profit for the first time this year.

Cypherworx Inc., which creates online training programs for non-profit organizations, started in 2009, when Cypher, 46, started working on the prototype software.

With a staff of 22, this year's revenues are expected to reach $1.6 million. Next year, Cypher expects sales of about $3 million. By 2015, he projects sales will grow to about $6 million.

Cypherworx creates the training programs necessary for individual members of non-profit associations to get a variety of industry and government required certifications.

"We work mainly with national associations and we help them take their credential certification programs and regulatory training and put it online at an affordable cost to their membership," said Cypher.

Cypherworx partners with experts in various fields to develop the courses.

"In some cases we build them ourselves and in other cases, we will go buy a catalog or the rights to a catalog from somebody else," he said.

Cypherworx doesn't charge the associations for the branded websites they get, or the content Cypherworx creates. But Cypherworx and the associations share the fees charged to members for the courses.

Born in Chicago, Cypher moved to Rochester with his family when he was 17 and about to start college.

He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration at Villanova University in 1988 and a master's degree in strategic communication and leadership at Seton Hall University in 1995. The Seton Hall degree was earned over three years, partly online.

For about a year he worked for ABC Sports, building camera towers at golf tournaments. At the time, Cypher wanted to be a sports broadcaster and Chris Berman, the ESPN on-air personality, advised him to get a job at a small market station and work his way up.

So Cypher became an intern at what is now YNN in Rochester. Later, he got a job at an Elmira TV station as a weekend sportscaster and a weekday news reporter.

"I did it for six months and hated it, absolutely hated it," he said.

Later he worked in sales, but eventually consulted with a career counseling service at Rochester Institute of Technology where he learned he may have an knack for advancement and fund raising.

He returned to Rochester in 2004, did some consulting work and became executive director of the Genesee Valley Health Partnership, a 30-hour-a-week position that left him time, over five years, to work on his business plan for what became Cypherworx.

We sat down with Cypher to talk about his career and Cypherworx.

When I had my first client I hired six RIT co-op students: They were lower cost. They were really great workers, and could do all the work that I needed them to do. And it gave me the option, if the business really took off, that I could hire them when they graduated. And that's what I did. There are six people here that are my first group of co-ops that are still employees three years later.

I've been fortunate in building a really good mentor network: I have had people over the years who have taken me under their wing, not just one mentor or two mentors. It's a whole bunch of people who have helped me out.

Keep making decisions and keep moving forward: And if you make the wrong decision, if you're going to fail on a decision, do it while you're moving forward and recover fast from that and do it fast. Don't dwell on it, fix it and move forward.

The worst thing that can happen: Is you take so much time to make a decision because you just don't have enough information that you miss the opportunity that's in front of you.

Make the decision: And if you make the wrong decision, that's OK, we'll recover and we just invested in your education because now those people get really smart and they get really good at knowing how to not make the wrong decision as they go forward.